The Giggling Dark: Session Sixteen

Sir Xellous: The 14 year old Celestial Knight, played by Ryan. He helped secure Thought-8, an elusive and powerful black Khen-Zai, for capture by the Celestial Knights. He's currently trying to figure out how to stabilize Thought-8, who had sustained significant harm, so that he can interrogate Thought-8 as to the whereabouts of his wife

Ikuinen Lampo: The star that gave Sir Xellous the ability to be a Celestial Knight in the first place. She's currently in the body of Genevieve, Sir Xellous' long dead sister. Yeah, that's a bit weird.

Ernzan: A former member of The Cursed of Xalmantra, a group that Ernzan claimed was completely defunct. He's since reformed and become a Celestial Knight under Tooma Tohoya, the star that Sir Xellous had recently rescued while Ernzan was off saving Michael from the Nameless.

Michael: Sir Xellous' ten year old brother-in-law, who had been forced by Ernzan to summon the Flammeous Lads that had kicked off this campaign. He's claimed to have received unique powers from his encounter with the Nameless, but nothing more is known so far.

Thought-8: A black Khen-Zai, one of the Passionless Ten, the ruling class of the Khen-Zai. His goals are to defeat the Nameless, a group of horrific extra-universal beings who have been trying to destroy  the universe since the beginning of time. He was captured last session while trying to kill Tooma Tohoya. He's on death's door, as of his moment.

Komas: The assistant to the Prime Minister of  King Varlur. He was the one who got Sir Xellous into a private audience with the king, who was then saved by Sir Xellous from falling prey to the Khen-Zai.

Other Celestial Knights began to come into the room where Sir Xellous, Lampo, Ernzan, and Michael were with Thought-8. Ikuinen Lampo quickly explained that she was in an Emissary form. There were such forms, what the Khen-Zai called Options A and B. "A" was phenomenally powerful but used a lot of energy, taking centuries to recharge. "B" took much less energy but required a fully willing person to let them borrow their corpse for revivification. Ikuinen Lampo was telling Sir Xellous this because she had the ability to restore Thought-8 to full health, but she wouldn't be able to maintain the Emissary form. It was something she was willing to do, but she wanted to get Sir Xellous' permission before she did it. Sir Xellous told Lampo that he would keep Thought-8 alive another way, somehow.

Realizing that the other Celestial Knights were a little too close for comfort (a black Khen-zai! What a novelty!)  Ikuinen asked them all to step back or help as they could, as Thought-8 knew where Sir Xellous' wife was. Sir Xellous knelt and begged for any help they could give him, prostrating himself in earnest. A woman named Loray awkwardly stepped out from the crowd and offered to help.  She was an expert on Khen-Zai anatomy.  She helped Sir Xellous scan the injured Thought-8's aura (all Celestial Knights can see auras). Loray stabilized Thought-8 and then spent the next four days helping Sir Xellous understand Khen-zai anatomy better, as she worked on bringing Thought-8 back to a more healthy state. During that time Telos, Ernzan, and Michael left to deal with some problems going on in Broadnough. Sir Xellous promised them he'd be there as soon as he could.

At the end of the fourth day Sir Xellous heard a commotion from outside. The other knights had found a gigantic Khen-Zai mech. One of the knights, Charu, wanted to jump into the mech and take the fight to the Khen-Zai. Sir Xellous, although dearly wishing to, passionately  argued against this; a lot more research needed to be done before they climbed into any strange machines. Charu called Sir Xellous a coward and a shirker of his duties toward his family, as Sir Xellous' story had become well known amongst the knights. Sir Xellous apologized for his lack of experience, interrupting Charu's tirade and confusing him. Not to be put off, Charu jumped on Sir Xellous' youth and inexperience, telling him that both of those things made it impossible to take him seriously. ; Sir Xellous retorted that experience wasn't necessary to see the flaws in this particular plan. Charu, worn out by his tirade and a bit confused, pause a moment.  Sir Xellous took advantage of the moment: he told the Charu that real courage required wisdom as well as boldness. Charu said that they were running out of time but Sir Xellous responded that didn't mean stupidity. But Charu refused to back down. The Khen-Zai were known to deliberately show up at planets, stay long enough to attract the Nameless there, and then leave right before they were attacked, leaving the planet as easy prey. Charu had seen this happen once, from the deck of an elven void ship. If they weren't going to use the mech they needed to leave, preferably by the end of the day. Otherwise the Khen-Zai would deem their planet to be not worth the effort of invading. Sir Xellous reluctantly agreed; he'd wanted to investigate the dead Khen-Zai they still had for enchanting bits and bobs he could use, as well as interrogate the now healing Thought-8 about Kora. Charu went with him, offering to help as he could.

Sir Xellous examined Thought-8's aura with Charu's help to make sure he didn't communicate improperly, as Khen-Zai talk through aura manipulation. Then, since he was the only Celestial Knight who had developed Aura Manipulation, Sir Xellous tried to talk with the unconscious Thought-8. Sir Xellous asked Thought-8 for information on Kora's whereabouts, in exchange for guaranteeing Thought-8's safety. Thought-8 waited a moment and Sir Xellous became afraid he would send out a distress call to the rest of the Khen-Zai. But Thought-8 agreed to the terms.

Kora was in Broadnough, married to Komas. She had just given birth. And the Cursed of Xalmantra had been sent out to make sure she drowned her son.

Sabina's Castle: Session Ten

Spar: A dwarven con artist played by Andy. He's now the head of an illegal dwarven nog smuggling ring, and looking for an opportunity to plant the Dagger of Betrayal into Tara, his former human lover and now head of the Kami Guardian's, back.

Salt: Spar's daughter by dwarven chieftain Onyx. She is currently estranged from Spar on account of his oathbreaking ways. Well, that and sleeping with Tara, which Salt finds repulsive.

Pyrite: A less maligned dwarf than Spar, who helps him with his operation.

Iron: The provider of the dwarven nog.

Lucius: Spar's human friend and right hand man.

Herminus: One of Spar's underlings, formerly the head of security at Sabina's Castle.

Quartz: A member of a scheister dwarven troupe that hoodwinks humans, also a good friend of Spar's.

One very successful month of selling to The Wanderer's House later passes. Spar, Herminus, Quartz, and Iron were sitting in Spar's new apartment, when Salt marched in. She bore a summons from The Greybeard Council for Spar, commanding him to appear before him to explain his smuggling of dwarven nog in three days or be executed. Salt read the decree aloud, rolled it up, slapped it in Spar's hand, and walked out, with no other words exchanged.

Spar found Pyrite as quickly as he could. Pyrite had just heard about the summons and was freaking out, dead certain that the summons was a formality; they would kill Spar. The council was in the back pocket of the Kami Guardians, who were looking for any reason to kill Spar. Spar asked who chafed under the rule of the Kami Guardians the most on the council. Pyrite told him that would be Jadru, who was almost always kept close to Tara. Spar asked to be taken to the Kami Guardian's temple, which was just outside of Argentum Prime, near the jungle. Pyrite refused, walking in was suicide! Spar said he had a plan, but that he couldn't ask Pyrite to do it for him. Pyrite said he'd only let Spar go if he could come with him. Spar said he'd expect nothing less.

Spar went to Luscius and asked if he knew a disguise artist. Luscius said he did, and brought him to see Spar. Spar asked for a disguise by the next morning. The man told him it would take a massive amount of money... which Spar produced immediately. Startled, the man said he'd get to work. The next morning Spar and Pyrite went to the temple, which was grown into the jungle, just outside Argentum Prime's walls. After a little while Spar saw Tara going out to the privy. He followed her out, and when she stepped out of the privy after relieving herself he tried to stab her with the Dagger of Betrayal.

Spar missed.

He tried to stab her again, but Tara pulled him down with magical vines that sprouted out of the ground. Spar told Tara the curse was now passed to her. Tara laughed, who did Spar think he was fooling?? The last thing Spar saw was Tara walking away, laughing. The vines tightened, and Spar saw darkness.

To be continued...

May the Power Protect You: Introduction

When in doubt set your display on watermelon print!

There are games that you play and you think "Wow, that was nice", but for whatever reason that's where it stays. You forget about them and move on. They were fun, but they just don't stick with you. Other games, however, leave a fire in your gut. Burning Wheel. Bleak Spirit. Torchbearer. Mouse Guard. Three Dragon Ante. Tsuro. Bargain Quest. 4th edition DnD. This isn't something that happens immediately, by and large. The same excitement happens to you, but as it calms you realize that that experience was real. No matter where you go, no matter what you do, the experience you had with that game goes with you. It informs you as a person and makes an impact far larger than you ever expected.

Heroes of the Grid is fast turning into that type of game for me.

I eagerly await THESE rangers.

At first I thought the game was only incredibly difficult, which is something that will draw me like a moth to a flame, of any size. I definitely thought it was nostalgia, given that I was watching Power Rangers when I was twelve years old, long after most sane children stopped watching it. I'll outright admit that it was the fact that Jonathan Ying, the creator of Bargain Quest, that drew my initial attention to it. There's a joy to Ying's designs that is impossible to deny and I wanted to see what he did with one of my favorite childhood franchises. And I'd be lying if the difficulty, which I've referred to quite a bit, wasn't something that initially intrigued me, all the way wondering how the heck anyone would keep playing the game with me.

But we got better, and as we did I found something about the game that I adore: the table conversation. I find that  games that I really like provide interesting table talk between players, with the game providing the subject of that conversation. You stop talking about seemingly important things like work, school, or what-have-you, and get to something important: what to do in the face of adversity, whether that adversity be caused by the other players or something external, that you must team up with them to defeat. There, hidden in the cardboard and plastic, something very real is happening: a veritable sacrament of trial and travail. And these conversations, steeped in symbols and half-revealed myths, show a lot of things to people about each other, in a way that's safe and digestible. And I think the quality of the game is directly dependent upon the quality and type of conversation it produces. HotG produces some of the purest conversations I've ever seen in a table top game.

That above line probably doesn't make much sense, but here's what I mean. In Pandemic  there's something structured that players have to work through. They talk about who should do what, and in what order, and then they have to play through the round structure, all the while hoping that what they had planned works, over an extended period of time. There's also a definite pecking order in Pandemic, where different class cards are obviously better than others, which means that those particular players are inherently more important than other players. The system constrains, rather than liberates.  This isn't a knock on Pandemic, but I'd be lying if I said that games without the Medic were ones that I was pessimistic about winning. Why on earth the designer didn't just give the basic abilities of the Medic to everyone is beyond me. And, again, I love the game! But those issues are ones that I consistently find to be a very real thing when playing.

Heroes of the Grid completely sidesteps both of these problems very deftly, by having the problems you have to deal with in that round being known at the beginning of said round and having no structure for player resolution beyond "Figure it out guys!" The game drops all the threats before you, gives you a certain number of actions (usually three), and gets out of the way. The only limit on your group is the number of actions you have. This level of freedom either sinks the group or frees them. You can address your problems in any way you want! It's completely up to the group how to save Angel Grove... which means that your tactical errors are not on anyone but your group. There's no moment when you can blame the game for a tactical decision, because the game gets out of the way so completely that damage is dealt "to the group", who then have to decide who will take the hit!

I was a bit concerned. Having never played in such an open game before I wondered how on earth things would shake out. And the intimidating nature of monster deployments meant that either players would figure the game out in time or they wouldn't. And I was right. When people didn't know they had to take the initiative for beating the game for themselves the game was a slog. I have a pretty forceful personality, but even I found I couldn't carry literally everyone at the table. It was easier to play the game solo than to be peeking at everyone's hands all the time. I'm not there to baby-sit, I'm there to kick ass and drink milk and my house is literally out of milk (well, if you don't count Almond Milk, and I don't unless I must).

But when players were playing actively? Oh, the game sung. Combo after combo was poured into the unsuspecting monsters, wreaking a wide swath of death and destruction, preserving Angel Grove and the established order! The adrenaline that this game makes is incredible! When everyone is working together there's a high that I've only really seen happen in a really well run-4e DnD game. There's a camaraderie that happens during a good 4e game that I have never run into in another game, where you are all in it together, where it's you vs. the world and you all have your moves and it's not going to be easy but by God you are going to win, one way or another. And for years I really wanted to get back into 4e, although I didn't know it was to recapture this feeling. I love Burning Wheel and the rest, but they are not group games in the way that 4e is. But I couldn't bring myself to come back to the game, put off by a bunch of issues that I may or may not write about someday. Suffice it to say, HotG does not have any of the issues I have with 4e. HotG had all the fun 4e had, but sharpened, focused, and stuck into a stick of dynamite, for that extra POP.

The other reason why the game works as well as it does is the characters. To be able to facilitate the type of discussion that this game requires the characters need to be extremely focused. Everyone needs to have a different strength, so that way the conversation flows from person to person on a pretty regular basis. The characters must be relentlessly balanced against the monsters and each other so players are on even footing, while being unique and effective. It's a tall order and one that would drive any game designer mad in the attempt. The fact that Jonathan Ying can even fake being a put together human being after such an experience is nothing short of a miracle. I mean, these balancing issues can be touchy for players in co-op games and are almost entirely the reason why 4e DnD existed in the first place! The fact that there are very few balancing issues with the game, across over a dozen characters, with many more on the way, is incredible. Even if it means Mr. Ying has to snuggle a gigantic teddy bear to go to sleep at night.

A side note to Mr. Ying: 
My children have a wonderful Winnie-the-Pooh bear, who is quite large, soft and cuddleable. He's been in my family a long time, as he was a gift from our uncle to my sister when she was a little girl. I bring this up because he cuddles quite well, even for a grown man. I speak from personal experience. He's helped me process some of my chief traumas in my life, such as the losses I've incurred playing your game. He does not judge. Should you need to borrow him I doubt my children would begrudge you, so long as the proper forms are filled out. The younger one in particular values his bureaucracy, God help us all.

Each one of these characters is legitimately awesome. I could go on, and on, and on about their design and how they interact at the table and how excited I am that they play the way they do... oh wait...

I have a blog.

I can just do that.

And I will. 

Contain your excitement, please.

So, at intermittent points, I'm going to release another post about the amazing characters in Power Rangers: Heroes of the Grid. I'm going to talk about their strengths, their weaknesses, and any anecdotes I have about these characters in play, along with random ideas I have for using them. It's going to be a wild ride. I will start with the rangers from the core set and will move onto the Kickstarter exclusive characters afterwards, and from there to further expansions, probably Shattered Grid, Bulk and Skull, and then onward. I hope you join in.

I wasn't kidding about the bear.

The Giggling Dark: Session Fifteen

Sir Xellous: the main character, played by Ryan. He was pulled into a weird, otherworldly dimension where there were floating sharks and tortured stars and another Beast of the Apocalypse, and just knocked himself trying to get into a ziggurat. He's now the captive of the Khen-Zai.  He wields Pyra, his wife Kora's bow, and some gauntlets that make him a phenomenal brawler.

Ernzan: a member of "The Cursed of Xalmantra". He had been the one to make Michael summon the Flammeous Lads in the first place, only to give up on his venture when his wife and sister were killed by Kora. It's been awhile since we've seen him.

Genevieve: Sir Xellous' big sister, who had died in the first session of this game to a Flammeous Lad.

Michael: Kora's little brother, who had been used to summon the Flammeous Lads. He had stayed behind with his mother, Threen, when Sir Xellous had left with Telos to save the King.

Telos: A hero from another place, another time. He had been badly injured in a battle with the first Beast of the Apocalypse, and on the mend since. He had journeyed with Sir Xellous to Broadnough to save the King.

Dagger of Betrayal: An artifact that's used in Sabina's Castle. Nothing is really said about it other than it's used to brainwash people.

Sir Xellous woke up, chained to a wall. He was completely naked. Standing before him was the black Khen-Zai who had stolen Kora away. The black Khen-zai spoke in Sir Xellous' mind: he was glad Sir Xellous was awake, cause he wanted him to watch. The black Khen-Zai walked over to a pile of Sir Xellous' stuff, about forty feet away, and grabbed Pyra. As he stood up, ready to snap Pyra, Sir Xellous reached out to the black Khen-Zai and managed to change his mood to "condescendingly jovial". The black Khen-Zai looked at the bow, shrugged, and held onto it. "Not yet" he told Sir Xellous. "Stew".

Some red Khen-Zai came in and began doing something came into the room and began doing something weird with their auras Sir Xellous examined them, and realized they were talking to each other. They worried about "the invaders" and the might they possessed. Sir Xellous scanned the rest of the room. Behind the wall opposite him was the black aura of the Beast of the Apocalypse. The Star's screaming had become almost normal now and Sir Xellous had almost forgotten it. Sir Xellous tried to pry his manacles off, hoping their mysterious properties were of an aura nature. They weren't (MAGNETS: HOW DO THEY WORK???). Sir Xellous tried to flatter the Khen-Zai in regards to their tech, to no avail. If anything they grew annoyed and even the black Khen-Zai gripped Pyra a bit harder than Sir Xellous would have liked. The Black Khen-Zai pulled out a Black Dagger that looked very much like a Dagger of Betrayal (which is talked about all the time in my other campaign, Sabina's Castle!) and drove it into Sir Xellous' skull. Dark thoughts entered into Sir Xellous' mind, trying to take over. But Sir Xellous resisted, and the Dagger recoiled from his skull, shattering.

Another red Khen-Zai came running in and informed the black Khen-Zai (referred to as Thought-8) that "the Emissary" was outside. Thought-8 was visibly disturbed: the Khen-Zai had specifically made their move on the planet when all the Emissaries were unable to come to the planet's aid. After verifying that the minion had not made a mistake, Thought-8 remarked that it must be an Option B Emissary, which had not been used in well over a thousand years. Thought-8, afraid, turned his will upon the Beast of the Apocalypse's aura and overloaded it, which would kill the beast and the star. Sir Xellous redirected the beast's self destruction away from the star to everything in the room Sir Xellous was in. He managed to mostly shield himself from the blast as well as Thought-8, who almost died. The red Khen-Zais were killed.

Through the door walked Genevieve.... and Sir Xellous found himself immensely attracted to her. She walked up to him and asked, in Ikuinen Lampo's voice, if he was OK. Noting his confusion, Lampo apologized. She had borrowed Genevieve's body so she could get here in time, as Genevieve had a strong bond with Sir Xellous in life. Lampo grabbed his stuff and touched Sir Xellous' shackles with the star metal, causing them to malfunction and open. As Sir Xellous got his clothes back on Ernzan and Michael came running in. It was explained that Ernzan had become the Celestial Knight to Tooma Tohoya, the star that Sir Xellous had just freed. Ernzan had rescued Michael from The Nameless, who had shown up shortly after Sir Xellous and Telos had left. Speaking of Telos, he came running in. He had been fighting the other Khen-Zai. He was very happy to see Sir Xellous , as he had been unconscious in the real world for three weeks! Copnfused, Sir Xellous asked where he was, currently. Lampo told him that he was in the Ethereal Plane, where the Khen-Zai could travel without alerting The Nameless. Sir Xellous asked Ernzan and Michael  how they'd gotten there and they blanched, saying that was for another time.

Sir Xellous thanked Ernzan for protecting Michael and Threen, especially after everything. Looking at the severely injured Thought-8, he said he would set up shop here, in the ziggurat. Thought-8 was the same Khen-Zai who had kidnapped Kora: Sir Xellous would make him reveal Kora's location.

The Burning Codex: A Personal Preamble

The day before deploying to the UAE I was a lot happier than I had any right to be. I would be taken from my family for year, with a group of people that I had grown to dislike pretty intensely, for a year. I'd had some health concerns which had been shouted down and I really didn't want to test the limits of said issues. Telling the Army that they are wrong about deploying you gets you looked at sideways, but actively fighting getting deployed gets them looking to get rid of you as fast as possible. So I was not in a good place. But I was pretty giddy that day, cause that's the day that the Burning Codex's Kickstarter was announced. I really wanted to see what they would take from Revised and improve, and I was even more excited to finally hold the book in my hands.

Boy, that's even more pathetic than it sounded in my head. Yikes

Of course I brought my Burning Wheel Gold and Revised books with me on deployment! I was heading into an area I knew I would have some free time and would need to find a way to relax. I kinda figured that, since I was having the Codex sent to me on deployment, I could finish whatever campaign I was running with the book. It wasn't much of an expectation, but somehow it kept me going, just that little thing to look forward to, in a way that I didn't know would be so important until later.

The deployment was horrific. One of the things that people do not understand in Air Defense is that -if there no one to shoot at- the chain of command is the enemy. Command has a little man complex; it's not sexy sitting around and hoping that your country is not fired upon, and so the command chain begins to make demands that are stupid... like constant 24 hours shifts, physical training (in the UAE sun) after said 24 hour shifts, and random bunk checks that may or may not cut into that essential sleep time. So I was pretty stressed out to begin with, but I was keeping my cool as best I could. I was talking to my family as much as I could and playing Burning Wheel and FFG Star Wars on my days off.

The straw that broke the camel's back was one of my NCOs. She had taken an immense (and undeserved) dislike to me, and ran me into the ground as often as she could, going so far as to shout at me in front of my higher ups and punishing me for things that she would never have dared to do to anyone else. My chain of command watched, and nothing was done. It's almost like if you're not a part of their particular little clique they didn't care what happened to you, or something! I tried talking to my NCO about it and to make peace but nothing seemed to help in the long run. Eventually she would return to punishing me for things that frankly didn't even exist. So I kept up Burning Wheel, running a game in the setting that eventually would be used in The Giggling Dark campaign, talking with my family, and trying to relax as much as I could, hoping against hope that things would get better, eventually.

They didn't. 

I almost didn't make it.

They had to send me home.

Three weeks of mental hospitals in two countries later and I was home by the beginning of August. The things that I remembered at the end of the deployment were haunting me on a moment-by-moment basis. I had found that I felt like a stranger in my own home, my country, and (most of all and especially) my unit. And, let's be honest, Army counselling is crap. It's used for two things: to either medicate the person into compliance or to get them kicked out on a technicality that robs them of any compensation they should get, so that way Big Army continues to roll. There were moments where I was in a darkness so intense I thought I could puke it up like stomach acid.

And yet I continued living, and I continued to wait for the Codex. I'm still not sure why it was important that I waited for this book and I will probably never find out. I checked my Battery mail as often as I could, only to eventually find out that they had misrouted my book and that I needed to wait a little bit longer. And so I did. I don't think I was excited for the book anymore, I just wanted to see the darn thing. 

It came. I was excited. And it began to fall apart. Normally I would have been pretty upset, but something about this turn of events didn't. The book had finally gotten to me, and it was beautiful, and faded, and falling apart, and I couldn't let it go. I tried decorating it a little bit as the gold faded, not to mention taping up the edges as the book frayed, but my son got his hands on the silver Sharpie I was using and this was the result:

My wife will get around to giving it a nice red cloth cover, like its damaged brother, Burning Wheel Revised Gold (which my wonderful one year old scratched pretty badly by dragging it across our cement front porch!), but for the moment this is enough for me. I don't know why, not completely, but I cannot let go of this book. The journey I took with it, by waiting for it, was even more profound than the books that actually went with me to the UAE, which is saying something, because those books are incredibly special to me too! The Gold book I took with me has been gifted to Kurlak, as he couldn't get the core book. It's even more battered than its Codex brother and there are days I find myself missing it, but it's in a good place. I'm glad it's doing good, as it should. I look at my Revised books and feel a contentment that they went through the journey with me and that they survived, seemingly unscathed. But every time I look at my beautiful wreck of a Codex I smile, because the pain and anguish of that time, which was seemingly transferred to my copy of the Codex, has melted and been forged into something sharp, hard, indestructible. My Codex still goes on, and so do I. We're a bit battered and bruised. But, although the gold on my book cannot be seen anymore it goes on, somewhere where the wind, sand, absurd heat, and evil NCOs cannot touch. 

Sabina's Castle: Session Nine

Spar: The main character, a dwarven con artist played by Andy. He's out to start a criminal empire so he can get close enough to stab his former lover, Tara, in the back with a Dagger of Betrayal, gifted to him by a cultist from The Cult of the Leviathan. But first he needs to get a distributor for his illegally obtained dwarven nog.

Luscius: a human criminal who's one of Spar's best friends. Luscius took Spar in after the dwarves kicked him out for being an oathbreaker.

The Dwarf: A mysterious stranger who gave Spar the Dagger of Betrayal.

Spar needed to find an initial distributor for his nog. Luscius recommended  the Wanderer's House, which was just next to the "good" side of town, but was still a part of the rough side of town. Spar checked checked out the place first and found it would be ideal as the beginning human inn, so he took Luscius with him.

It certainly was a nicer area of town, but definitely not too nice, with only one pile of refuse, on one side of the street! As they walked along, marveling (non ironically) at the cleanliness of this area, Luscius told Spar that he and Luscia, the owner of the The Wanderer's House, had a very long history; Luscius lamented that it was not a sexual one, because how cool would it be for a Luscius and Luscia to have knocked boots? As they approached the front doors Spar saw there were human guards, who were large and imposing. Spar told Luscius to be careful, that everything rested upon him, right now. Luscius put his hand on Spar's shoulder and told him that it would work out. Luscia was a prickly person to deal with, and Luscius knew how to handle her, even if not in the way he would have liked. Spar nodded, told Luscius he trusted him, and off Luscius went.

A few minutes later Spar heard a familiar voice ask if he still had the Dagger. The Dwarf came out of a nearby alley. He looked rather pissed. Spar told him that the problem was being worked. The Dwarf replied that wasn't satisfactory; the dwarves were suffering while Spar dawdled. Spar asked if the Dwarf wanted the job done right. The Dwarf retorted that Spar should not be so concerned for himself in the face of such suffering. Paltry wages and fecal matter from others than the dwarves afflicted their district. Spar told the Dwarf the decision was not his to make, it was Spar's, and Spar would deal with it however he chose. The Dwarf walked away even angrier than he was at the beginning.

Luscius came flying out of the tavern. He swore he'd have Luscia yet, that she as the finest woman he'd ever known. A bottle came flying out of the inn and hit him on the head. Luscius dropped like a rock. An astonishingly beautiful red-head came out, calling Luscius a pervert, and kicked his still form right in the ribs. Spar approached her and told her that he was the dwarf that Luscius had been talking about. Luscia, without missing a beat (or kick to Luscius) asked for a sample of the nog. Spar warned against it, but Luscia insisted, so Spar handed her a small vial, advising a very small sip. Luscia smelled it and whooped out loud, commenting on how strong it smelled. She downed the whole thing thing in a gulp.

And stood for fifteen seconds.

When she collapsed the bouncers came to get her. Spar gave one of them the other samples he had, saying they were a gift from him. Spar took Luscius home.

The Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game: Drama Rules v1

So after a few sessions I have a few thoughts on how to modify this game. I have a few issues with games that don't have BITs now... which is a flaw, I suppose, but considering how character-centric so many super-hero comics can be can I really be blamed for looking at this and thinking "This could use something akin to BITs?" If you need to know what sorta thing I'm aiming for read my Marvelous Manifesto. My review of the system, which gives some impressions I had of it in my usual rambly tone, can be found here.

A few terms:
Red stone (R): Energy you can put toward an action. You have two numbers to satisfy in being successful: Difficulty (minimum number of stones to complete a part of the action) and Resistance (number of stones you need to complete the whole action). Scaled from 1-10. You normally recover one R for every three white stones you have.

White Stone (W): Your health and your ability to regenerate red stones. If you lose Ws you can choose to be knocked out, which puts you at the mercy of the GM.

These are the two resources in the game. You also have panels, which are a single "unit" of action. Panels can last any number of time, but if it's not specified it's assumed to be 30 seconds. A certain number of panels make a page, which doesn't seem to have a mechanical effect but it makes journaling the sessions really cool. Any number of pages make up a mission, and any number of missions make up an issue.


I want to complicate it a bit. I'd like to introduce the following aspects to the character:

Each player makes up to three Ideals for their hero. Ideals are the thing that the character idolizes and wishes for more than anything and chases as hard as they can... until the call of the hero is finally heeded. There must be at least one Ideal. You are rewarded for betraying your Ideals in a dramatic fashion.

There are also Challenges, which can also be up to three per character. These are the things that the character is incredibly uncomfortable about. Each of these Challenges are rated from 3 (most uncomfortable) to 1 (a minor bother). You are rewarded for letting these things inconvenience you and making your life harder. Being in the presence of a Challenge will make the Difficulty and Resistance of all your tests go up by the Challenge's rating.

Example: One of Wolverine's Challenges is "Can't stand being talked down to"(2). Whenever Wolverine is in a situation where someone is talking down to him and he's trying to accomplish a goal the Difficulty and Resistance of his task increases by 2. Ouch!

There are two Goals each session: the player's Goal and the GM's. The player's Goal is what the PC is trying to accomplish that session. It's a natural extension of one of the player's Ideals. The GM's Goal is the heroic mission that session. You are rewarded for accomplishing these goals.

Now, all of this is dropped on top of a third resource: Blue Stones (B). Blue Stones are awarded to you for roleplaying your CIGs (c'mon, you know it's catchy).

You can use Blue Stones to:

• Push: Turn 1B into 3R.
• Shortcut: Spend 1B to invent a "shortcut" in the narrative and get 1R to boot. Example: Spider-Man is being chased by the Green Goblin and has exhausted all of his red stones in previous battles, saving civilians, and now running like hell. Exhausted, Spider-Man's player chooses to spend 1 Blue Stone to say the wall-crawler pulls up a manhole cover and escape. Goblin can't fly all that well in these particularly tight tunnels! In addition to the 4 Red Stones that Spider-Man normally gets at the end of a panel  Spider-Man's player gets 5, because the player had chosen the Shortcut option.
• Gather Strength: Turn 3B into 1W, which wears off at the end of the mission or when damaged as normal.

At the end of a session award Lines of Experience as normal. After that award Blue Stones. You get Blue Stones by:

• Sacrificing Your Dreams: You get 1B per Ideal betrayed in a dramatic and tragic way.
• Everyman: Sort of like Burning Wheel's Embodiment reward, 3B for great roleplaying. This has to be above Sacrificing Your Dreams, this has to be about portraying  a thoroughly normal person interacting with things that are not normal at all.... including the things that used to be normal but not feeling any real connection to them. This is for those moments of loneliness, beautifully narrated by the player, for the heartfelt speeches about trying to get back to a normal life, for those knock down drag out fights with the significant other about why on earth you can't back down from what you're doing and why you believe in it. Something has to break to get this award. I'll let you decide if that's literal or not.
• Allowing Something to Die: You close out an Ideal, declare it done, 1B per Ideal given up. This can only happen after an Everyman award.
• Facing Challenges: Instead of running away in the presence of your character's Challenges you manage the task at hand and the thing that's your Challenge, for a number of panels equal to the Challenge Rating. You gain Blue Stones equal to the Challenge Rating of the incident. 
• Achieving Goals: If the player achieves his or the GM's Goal that's 1B. If the player achieves both then it's 3B.
• Making Everyone Laugh: This is a pretty heavy system. If you can stop the table dead with laughter that's worth 3B.

Let me know what y'all think!

"Games Need to be Accesible"

(Or "sOmE GaMeS ShOuLd bE AcCeSiBlE bUt ThEy DoN't AlL hAvE tO bE, as Aaronsolon said)

So I'm walking into my workplace one day, minding my own business, when a coworker of mine runs up to me and strikes up a conversation. I'd talked with this guy a few times before, but had never talked in-depth with him. As we were going along I randomly decided to tell him about the board game night I and a buddy of mine host on Friday nights, after the kids and spouses are asleep. He was thrilled, but kinda blanked when I told him we would be playing Power Rangers. He told me that Thuy Trang was his eternal love and he would be there. Two other people had RSVP'ed and I was excited! Four people playing Power Rangers meant that we would be past the dreaded three player mark, where the game is probably at its hardest. People were claiming colors and it was gonna be a great  evening.

Yeah, no one else showed up but this guy. Oh, and he was new to anything beyond Monopoly.

I smelled disaster.

Part of the challenge of Heroes of the Grid is that it's a very intense game. You have to really know the character you're playing and have to be talking to everyone else constantly, otherwise the influx of attacks flattens the group. With a system as uncompromising as this game's I was afraid that I would not be able to help my newfound friend figure out the character in time. I was right. We got completely and utterly stomped, losing three times over, but choosing to complete the game anyway. We narrowly beat Scorpina, almost losing for a fourth time in a row. And it was great!... at least for me. We were both emotionally exhausted from the ordeal and it was past midnight. I kinda figured this would the last time I'd see this dude, honestly. Two people had bailed on that night and he was given a game that was completely and utterly overwhelming with few people to rely upon and, especially after the ass-kicking we had been subjected to, I wouldn't blame him if he didn't come back. I was also a little bitter that the game was this friggin' hard.

"So this was great! Let's have more people next time, yeah?"

We had a conversation about the game, and he was practically bubbling about it. Yeah, his luck had been horrible and the game was a bit overwhelming, but it had been such an adrenaline rush! We both wanted to play again, but again, past midnight and all that. I told him about some of the other experiences I'd had and he listened attentively. He said he wanted to get better, so he could have more fun with the game. I told him he would, if he put the time in. He nodded, said he'd be there next week, and left.

I stared, sorta slack-jawed, as he walked back to his car.

And, in case you think that was a fluke, I had called one of my buddies who had first played this game with me and asked how much he wanted to keep playing, since I wanted to buy expansions for the game and didn't want to waste my money on it if he wasn't going to play. Our first games had been very rough, with the first one ending in abject defeat and the second one sorta being cheated through. So I was pretty nervous. I had enjoyed the game, but I really enjoyed the challenge. I do not assume others have such a thrill at finding a game that takes some work to understand. But his answer surprised me. "Yeah, it felt like whenever I first played Pandemic, that same 'HOW ARE WE GOING TO BEAT THIS??'  was there. But that turned out alright and it's one of my favorite games now, so I figure why not keep cracking at this one? It's a lot of fun, even though we lost!"

The thing is, I don't mind easy games. One of my favorites, Tsuro, is extremely easy and simple. Anyone can play it, at any confidence level. I've never seen someone not be able to play Tsuro, and it's so aesthetically pleasing to lay down those gorgeous to lay down those tiles and laugh as you realize that everyone is screwed and that's OK. And I'll be damned if Smash Bros isn't an immensely fun game to play with people who have no idea what they're doing! It's got a pretty low threshhold of initial play. I certainly think there should be be gateway games for every genre of play imaginable. People need to know that these can be fun and achievable, in that order.

But I also think that some games should not be. The challenge is part of the point of that game, that adrenaline rush as you realize that, while you may not understand the rule-set, it is open to you and it is on you to understand and master and, should you fail, the system punishes you, sometimes severely. The experience is fraught with the danger of being sent all the way back to the beginning, sometimes with nothing to show for your trouble. And these types of games are extremely frustrating at times, especially for the people who love them. A good game that is difficult does not fail you because it failed, but because you failed. And that distinction has to be very, very, very apparent when playing the game. I haven't beaten Ornstein and Smough yet because Ornstein and Smough are intrinsically unfair, I keep losing to Ornstein and Smough because I'm not respecting the rules that the game has bound the world to. I don't dodge enough, I get very greedy for just that one extra hit that won't actually do anything but HE'S OPEN AND I SHOULD TAKE IT AND OH MY GOD IF I DON'T DO IT I'LL DIE. Such a panic mode is a trap, and these games are designed to punish panic. Do not panic. Think. Breathe. Be judicious. If you lose, you know why you did. If you won, you definitely know why you did. You earned it! You faced something that looked insurmountable and almost was, but you did it! The adrenaline high is unlike anything else, to know that, even if others did it or not, you did. Life is different after a victory like that.

There are some, however, who cannot partake in that experience. Whether it be an actual handicap, money, whatever it is, they cannot keep up, and feel bad that they can't. It doesn't help that the people who can weather such experiences rub it in their faces, which is all sorts of wrong, but even if they didn't there'd probably be some people who wanted to experience a different aspect about the game than the difficulty of it. Perhaps the story is something you want to experience, or maybe the aesthetic really appeals to you, or maybe you just want the damned designer to give you a break. And there are games that do this! And I have no issue with that! The designer, the one sending the message, thinks it should be more open. I'm perfectly fine with that.

But some don't, and that's fine too. Games are a communication of an interactive nature. The designer sets up a design and the player goes through it, guided by the rules into an experience that the designer intended. Some designers are a bit more specific about what they intend. They have forged an aesthetic, a set of mechanics, an experience, a message that is inseparable from the difficulty of the game itself. And yes, the designer gets to be the one who makes that decision. Yes, it excludes some people from playing. I doubt I'll ever finish Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. I'm just not very good at platformers. It's not something I really grew up with, and therefore a game that other platforming gamers have told me is hard is something that I'm not going to have the best experience with. And that's alright by me. The world is not about me, and I have no issue with someone telling me "No, this is not for you", because there are plenty of other things that are. In fact I have issue with games that say "this is for everyone!" because it means that they're precisely for nobody at all. I am quite sure that I will some day meet someone who hates Tsuro, although I've no idea if that person will have a true pulse or a soul. I may have to call for an exorcist at that point, but such is life. But Tsuro is also designed for a specific experience: an intro party game. It's not deep, and anyone trying to get real depth of gameplay out of base Tsuro is going to have a really bad time with it. But fortunately Tsuro's design is extremely clear and I don't know of a soul that has ever mistook it for a tactically deep game.

No game (or media) is for everyone, all the time, or sometimes ever. Not everyone can read Dostoevsky. Not everyone can read Gene Wolfe, or Tolkien. I don't think people should be machismo about it (although sometimes a good victory roar and chest pounding feels pretty dang good, particularly Dostoevsky), but let's not beat about the bush here: if you are not talented in the way that a game (or media) demands the designer has absolutely no obligation to make it so. In fact, he has a responsibility to make sure it hits a certain audience, and only them. Communication is, by nature, exclusive. I'm not going to deliberately (yes, that's in there on purpose... sigh....) tell someone else other than my wife and children that I love them with every fiber of my being. I am not going to call my best friends "Beppin", cause that's what I call my wife, nor would I say "DA BUB" to anyone but my firstborn son, because those things are meant to for them, and them alone. Is it elitist? Abso-friggin'-lutely it is, it's only for them and I mean to keep it that way! Are they good enough for me, which insinuates that others are not? Yes! Should I be a jerk about it? No! Just because I love my sons enough to talk absolute nonsense to them with a big grin on my face, in a way that only they understand, should not mean I should share that experience with my brother-in-law.... although I think he'd find that awesome.

I'll have to process that later.

Anyway. 

So, I don't think that games are for everyone, everywhere, at all times. No one is that good at designing. I think you can either say "my game is for everyone" and be lying, however unintentionally, or you can say "No, I've designed for this experience" and, if you don't want to compromise that experience or make a similar experience, there's absolutely no issue with it. Should people be jerks about having that particular talent? No. But those people shouldn't be penalized by not having a game built for that particular experience. They should not have that particular talent excluded from a gameplay experience. Excluding people from your game is an inevitability. The question becomes who do you want to talk to, and why?

And I think that's a lot more interesting than saying "This game is too hard and I think it should be made to fit me". If it's too hard for you, then look elsewhere. I know I have and I'm glad I did. But, sometimes, just sometimes, try it again. And again. And again. And again. You might get something you didn't expect to.

BUT HEAVEN HELP ME IF WE DON'T WIN NEXT TIME

EDIT: I changed a few things meant in good humor that, as it turns out, were not taken that way. There will be a further edit later, but I cannot do that at the moment, so I hope this very short  apology will have to do before I put in a longer one in later. My apologies are offered. It's the internet, so I don't assume forgiveness, but that out of my control.

The Giggling Dark: Session Fourteen

Sir Xellous: The King's newest Knight Protector. He just ended an entire uprising without bloodshed, and while taking care of people he passed out, after hearing a familiar voice screaming. He wields his wife's bow, Pyra, as well as gauntlets that make him a supernaturally good hand-to-hand fighter.

Beast of the Apocalypse: A fabled monster of old, whose appearance portends the end of the world. Sir Xellous had killed it with Pyra.

Sir Xellous found himself floating in a great darkness. Large, concealed shapes flitted in and out of that darkness. Before Sir Xellous floated a large building, with a walled ziggurat behind it. A bright light shone from the top of the ziggurat. Sir Xellous found he could "swim" in the air. Focusing on the light, Xellous tried to examine the aura. Even from this far away Xellous could tell that it was a star, whose aura was being messed with.

As Sir Xellous "swam" toward the light one of the larger shapes in the darkness started swimming toward him: it was a megalodon shark! Fortunately the light coming from the star was something the megalodon couldn't handle. Sir Xellous made sure he was bathed in that light. The megalodon swam away, shadows trailing from it. Sir Xellous got close to the top of the ziggurat and was gently pulled down next to the star.

Sir Xellous began to examine the star's aura more closely. He was chained down by a horrifically evil aura, which came from inside the ziggurat. The star was in so much pain he didn't even notice Sir Xellous, standing right beside him. The evil aura was so strong that trying to stop it from hitting the star or blocking off the source would be utterly impossible; Sir Xellous was just as likely to die from the attempt as anything. Sir Xellous would need to get the bottom of the ziggurat and find the entrance. There were stairs leading down to the base, and Sir Xellous took them.

At the bottom of the ziggurat  were two doors, set into the ziggurat itself, with a gate leading into the other building before Sir Xellous.  Sir Xellous examined the evil aura again. It was a weaponized Behemoth of the Apocalypse's aura. That meant there was another Beast of the Apocalypse, right under the star! If the star died Sir Xellous knew what would happen: the dead would rise in this local area and the entire governmental structure for the nation would fall within a matter of hours. He examined the doors in the ziggurat, which were on opposite sides of the staircase. Both of them had concave depressions in the doors, which had no other obvious points of exploitation. The depressions had distinct color auras attached to each one: gold and blue in the left door and purple and red for the door on the right. Sir Xellous went to the door on the left and tried to create an aura of sadness within himself and then imbue it into a coin he had. He was successful, giving the coin a blue aura. But the process dramatically hurt his body, causing him to almost pass out. Looking at the other, gold, depression, he focused on feeling blessed... but it was too much. Sir Xellous passed out out from the strain, already worn out. As he did so the door opened and a familiar, tri-fingered,  red hand reached out and pulled him. The Khen-Zai had him. Darkness fell upon him.

Burning Wheel: The Dark Souls of RPGs

As a quick aside... So within five minutes of me getting my copy of Burning Wheel, Revised Gold Edition, my one year old son grabbed it, smiled as he held the book, and then ground this magnificent book across our cement front porch. Yeah, it has a cover on it now. I even put ribbons in it! Yeah, the design's kinda dinky, but I love it cause it's so ugly.

My copy of Burning Wheel Revised Gold

.

"Burning Wheel is the Dark Souls of RPGs"- Jonathan Ying

There was a moment, right at the beginning of me getting to know this game, where I realized that I had no idea what the hell I was doing. The rules were so antithetical to Dungeons and Dragons, which was really hard for me to accept. I'd only known DnD and it hurt the brain a bit to jump. I was getting discouraged and wondering if I should just give up and move onto something simpler. I didn't breathe a word of this to anyone at the time, but after utterly screwing up the first campaign and then rebooting the second  I was about ready to just hang it up. And then we did the first Trait Vote, which is where all the players discuss the story and the characters and decide where they want to go from there. And everyone just sat there with this blank look on their faces. They'd never had this amount of control before. They'd never had to think about their characters the way the game was demanding them to think! I watched, entranced, as they dug deep into their guts and made awesome decisions about who their characters and what they wanted out of the story and they connected and they cared and couldn't wait to see how it would all shake out and they were excited and they had opinions and... and...

I almost cried for joy when I went home. And then I picked up my lovely, practically new and totally-not-scratched-because-I-didn't-have-kids Burning Wheel core book, smiled, and went back to reading. It

Burning Wheel is... Burning Wheel is... yeah, I've been playing for years and I still couldn't finish that sentence, not really. I've no idea why. In fact, until Mr. Ying (probably jokingly) called Burning Wheel the Dark Souls of RPGs I doubt I would have found a phrase that so accurately summed my experience of Burning Wheel. Burning Wheel is entirely about character development, in a way that is so uncompromising that it, indeed reminds me of Dark Souls. Most people who have only really played DnD may roll their eyes at that statement, because of course there's character development in their games! Characters develop all the time! This is a fair point, so let me illustrate my point with a few anecdotes of characters that illustrate my point the best.

In one of my games there was a character by the name of Joel. He was a common criminal and refugee, trying to get his hands on papers that would make him a native of the city he needed to stay in to stay alive. He was told he needed to grab a young woman to put into a compromising situation that would bring down the Lord Mayor of the town. This he did, not really asking any questions as to what would happen to said woman. Unfortunately the plan went awry and the woman was eaten alive by a lich, in front of Joel, who was paralyzed by fear. The lich licked his lips, thanked Joel for the tasty snack, and walked off to take over the town, which was already in the middle of a massive riot. In despair Joel ran away, only to find himself underneath the town and handed a holy sword by the Archangel Raphael, who told him that he was the only one who could save the city. Joel protested; he was not that guy. He was a coward, a common criminal! Raphael told Joel that there was much more to him than he knew. And Joel was then left alone with the sword. Joel desperately charged the lich who was destroying the town, all caution to the wind. He almost died in the attempt (which may have been the point, the GM doesn't know!), but did manage to kill the lich. Joel wanted to put the sword down and fade into obscurity, but an ancient evil had been reawakened during the riot that Joel had helped start and the sword responded to no one else. So Joel took on threat after threat, each deed more epic than the last. He was regarded as the hero of the city and the townsfolk worshiped the ground he walked on. He was accepted by all except himself, because he was the only one who remembered what he truly had been.

Xellous was a 13 year old enchanting prodigy, raw but with a lot of potential. One day he met a demonic boy called a Flammeous Lad. The encounter revealed a massive alien conspiracy to destroy the world, and in trying to save his wife's brother lost his wife to said aliens. The reclusive enchanter is now the chosen knight of a dead star, not to mention one of the most trusted bodyguards of the king, and the inventor of his own magical system to boot. All to get his wife back.

Every single action described in the above two paragraphs came from mechanics. It wasn't decided by the GM, nor the player, but was a result of us playing the rules of the game and getting story outputs. There were a grand total of three combat rolls in Joel's initial adventure. Not combat encounters, but combat rolls. Xellous probably rolled a dozen combat rolls in as many sessions Mechanics are attached to everything: Steel rolls for fear, surprise, and injury, a host of 400+ skills for every facet of the fantasy medieval life you can imagine, and a robust rolling system that tracks almost each roll you make. It is a lot, overwhelmingly so at times, but it all centers around the Beliefs, Instincts, and Traits of the character, labeled BITs. BITs are the central core of the character, and are as simple as they are deep.

Historical in-game footage of a GM forcing a
player to face the consequences of their Beliefs.

Beliefs are the top three proactive priorities of each character. They include statements like Fire is the king of all creation and I must get forged papers that prove I'm a citizen. I will do as Vincent Durant asks and get a woman, any woman will do, for his designs. For all of the talk about Burning Wheel's crunchiness this, the heart of the game, is the hardest part, by a good margin. The nuances of writing even a single Belief are countless, because you are rewarded for interacting with just one Belief in a number of ways. That's before you throw in the other two Beliefs, which can (and should!) be played off of each, creating moments of intense inner conflict for the character and a series of mechanical/narrative choices for the player. When confronted with one of these situations (and you will run into many) a player will hem and haw and try to find a way to navigate the puzzle the that they had volunteered for, humorously ruing their initial courage in creating a level of conflict this painful. But then it gets resolved, somehow, and the player is up to it all over again, looking for the next adrenaline kick of the GM asking the age old question that all Burning Wheel GMs love to ask: Are you sure you believe that?

Historical in-game footage of a player
having to face the consequences of
their Instincts.

Instincts are the opposite of Beliefs: reactive lessons learned from living. Does your character hate wearing shoes? That's an Instinct. Do they draw their sword at the first sign of "trouble"? That's an Instinct too! Do they take no shit from the man holding them down? Oh, that's definitely an Instinct. Now, you can also write Instincts to protect you from certain things you hate, but the game only rewards you when your Instincts cause trouble in the narrative. Not everyone really wants the trouble, but there are those players who intentionally design these specific little reactions to cause as much chaos as possible. I happen to love these players, because they are so cocky at the beginning, because they think there are no consequences. But that is the job of the GM, to push the consequences of those decisions as hard as he can upon the players. Unlike other games, where you're wondering how to make balanced encounters and trying to engage the mechanics of combat and whatnot, challenging the players to develop is the GM's primary job. There is literally no other consideration for a GM.

And finally there's Traits, which are the passive things about your character that matter. There are three different types of Traits: Character Traits (CTs), which are personality things about your character that you embody to the point of almost caricature, Dice Traits (DTs) which let you break the rules of the game in differing ways, and then Call-On Traits (C-Os), which either let you break a tie in your favor or reroll all your failures, all in relation to a single skill. There's not a lot of rewards for this particular part of the BITs, except for Character Traits, and only if you cause trouble or an unexpected twist with them.

So what are these rewards? They're called Artha, and come in three varieties: Fate, Persona, and Deeds. Fate is given out usually for following your BITs to their logical extreme and Persona for ignoring your BITs or playing them really well. Deeds are the most powerful artha in the game and by far the rarest, only given out for powerfully changing the setting in a way that goes beyond or horrifically contradicts your BITs. If you spend enough artha on a specific skill it becomes mechanically better than other skills, allowing you to greatly increase your effectiveness in that skill. It's a slow burn that rarely happens in any campaign, but when it does? It is remembered. It was deserved, richly.

*GULP*

These rewards make the uncompromising d6 pool system that the game runs on not only bearable but awesome. There's never really a moment where you're not getting something out of a roll. You log almost every single test you make, classifying it by its difficulty, which is determined by how many dice you rolled. It's a lot to handle and most people I know balk upon seeing it, with similar tones of voice as when meeting the Capra Demon for the first time. And it's not entirely unfair: it's a huge system, turning even the simplest of dice rolls into something that is agonized over as you wonder if you really afford to take one more helping die, as that changes the type of test you're logging and hurts your advancement. As laborious as it can seem at first, the rolling system of Burning Wheel allows for a level of control that is hard to explain until it is experienced. You are utterly free to address the problem however you like and can calibrate failures to still net you what's needed for your character advancement. It's hard to communicate how freeing it can be to have control. You are the master of your fate, one way or another, regardless of the outcome. And yes, that statement makes a whole lot of sense in the game. Play it to see what I mean.

There are a lot of supplemental systems that Burning Wheel has, three for extended conflict mechanics.This is probably where Burning Wheel gets the most undeserved ribbing. The three in the book are Duel of Wits (arguing), Fight! (melee combat) and Range and Cover (skirmishes and ranged combat). The core of these systems is an often-terrifying rock-paper-scissors-Spock... on steroids. These systems take the finickiness of the dice rolling system and amp them all the way to 11. I've never seen a lukewarm reaction to them; you either love them or hate them. If you love them it's because the tactics are just your kind, and if you hate them it's because you never would love something like it. I'm on session 14 of a campaign where these extended conflicts have never been used and the game goes just as well as it does for me when they are. I don't know if they'll come up at all in this game and I'm fine with it. They are truly optional, no matter what the naysayers are baying at this particular moment in their little hater hovels.

This game is not for everyone. Period. It is demanding, more than a bit finicky, and there are moments where you wonder if you're losing your mind. But there's these incredible moments of transcendence, where the rules drop away and you realize that the rules are, to quote the designer Luke Crane "a ramp", not a cage, and you are flying high in the sky and you're falling and you have no idea what will happen when you hit the ground but dear God, you are ready, cause you are the storm. And those moments are the ones I live for in my games.


If any of this makes sense, any of it, get the game. You will not regret it.

Sabina's Castle: Session Eight

Spar: A dwarf betrayed, now looking to build a criminal empire.

The Dwarf: A dwarf of unknown origin. He'd given Spar a Dagger of Betrayal and told him to stab Spar's compatriot, Cassian.

Herminus: The head of security for Sabina's Castle, a place Spar used to work.

Tara: Spar's former human lover, who had betrayed him, destroyed the guild that Spar had worked for (The Processors), and used the misfortune to push her guild, The Kami Guardians, to greater power.

After six months of looking for The Dagger of Betrayal Spar finally found it, lodged in a random alleyway. A few hours later The Dwarf found Spar and told him that plans had changed. The Dagger needed to wind up in Tara's back. Spar told The Dwarf that he would do it as soon as he could.

Spar started looking for someone who had a ready supply of dwarven nog. After a few weeks of searching the streets of Argentum Prime Spar found a young dwarf named Pyrite, who was sipping dwarven nog in a dwarven bar on the rough side of town. After a while of conversing and hitting it off in general Spar revealed who he actually was. Pyrite was shocked, but intrigued. He found Spar's oathbreaking admirable, given that he had tried to save dwarven lives, which Pyrite found sympathizable. Spar told him that he wanted to bring the Kami Guardians down but needed to create an infrastructure to do so. Pyrite thought this an ambitious but righteous quest. Since the demise of the Processors the Kami Guardians had taken full advantage of the dwarves, paying them less for more work. All of this was to say that Pyrite was in. Spar told him he was wanting to sell dwarven nog to the humans. Pyrite went pale; dwarven nog importations were heavily policed by the dwarves from the home land. They were quite specific as to how to sell nog.. but Pyrite knew a supplier and could Spar in contact with him, a dwarf by the name of Iron. Pyrite needed to talk with Iron first, however.

Spar waited for Pyrite to leave, waited a moment, and then headed out to talk to Iron himself. On his way over he ran into Quartz, a member of the Shadestone players. Quartz and Spar chitchatted for a few moments, with Spar's current living quarters being with Luscius the center of discussion, including an off-color comment about Tara that pissed Spar off. The then started off toward Iron, gingerly picking their way through the filth-encrusted streets. The Kami Guardians were definitely not as good at cleaning up sewage as the Processors. Pyrite was standing outside of Iron's apartment complex, holding his nose, when Spar and Quartz showed up. Pyrite panicked, telling them that they needed to wait for his signal. Spar told him that he couldn't afford to wait.

That's when someone came came soaring out a second story window and laded on with a sickening thud on his shoulder. Out of the front door rushed a dwarf with flaming red hair and golden irises, complete with bloodshot eyes. He proceeded to beat the unholy hell out of the defenseless dwarf, cussing him out the whole time he did it. Looking up at the crowd surrounding him, Iron loudly proclaimed the victim had slept with his sister and walked inside, back up the stairs. Spar followed him inside and coughed, loudly. Iron stopped and asked why an oathbreaker like Spar would want to see Iron, a respectable businessmen. Spar told Iron that he wanted to raise the dwarves up from their position of squalor. Iron walked up to him, intent on giving him a beatdown, but Spar managed to talk him down into listening. Spar told Iron of how stupid humans were, and how a little dwarven nog could be sold for an incredible amount of money. And all of that could be accomplished with just one keg of nog... which is so easy to lose!

That's when Herminus showed up. he had been disgraced and fired from Sabina's Castle because of Spar's deception and had been looking for "Jasper" ever since.. to join him! Herminus wasn't embittered against Spar at all, but he did need his help. This amused Iron, who roared that if Spar got this much respect from someone he had betrayed then Iron had no problem with him! Spar, Quartz, and Herminus left. Herminus collapsed onto Spar and Quartz and passed out. Quartz tried to convince Spar to leave Herminus alive, but Spar told him that not everyone with value had a brain.